Neil Young and Crazy Horse Announce Return to Stage

Neil Young will reunite with Crazy Horse for the first time in four years when they perform two unrehearsed shows on May 1 and 2.

Young, who appeared alongside former colleague Stephen Stills at a benefit event over the weekend, announced the news on his website. “Fresno. May 1 and 2. First time in a long time, live on stage. No rehearsal,” the statement read. Tickets for the concert in Fresno, Calif., at the Warnors Center are available at the site.

Jambase notes that Young and Crazy Horse last performed together in July 2014 in Iceland, with a lineup including Ralph Molina, Frank “Poncho” Sampedro, Dorene Carter and YaDonna West. Rick Rosas, who died in November that year, replaced bassist Billy Talbot, who was recovering from a stroke.

Intriguingly, Nils Lofgren has tweeted that he would be performing alongside Young and Crazy Horse at these shows. The longtime E Street Band guitarist, who joined Crazy Horse after Young fired the group (for the first time) in 1970, has collaborated with Young several times over the years, most notably on After The Gold Rush.

The band's last studio project together was 2012’s Psychedelic Pill. Sampedro said in 2013 that he feared that year’s tour might be their last with Young. “I just think once it stops, it's going to be kind of hard to get it rolling again," he said. "My gut tells me this is really the last tour. I hate saying their ages, but I'm 64 and I'm the baby of the band. I love playing, and we're playing as good as we ever did, but at any time something could go down with any one of us."

Even so, Young said in 2016 that his work with the band had a “huge future” with his other projects. “Crazy Horse has a cycle," he said. "If you look at Crazy Horse’s history and when Crazy Horse played and when they didn’t play, you can see that we’re still in the pocket.”

Young played only a handful of live shows during 2017 and has few appearances booked for this year. His other confirmed commitments include two shows with Promise of the Real in June and September, plus a private concert on July 14 as part of his Bridge School fundraising activities.

He spent part of last year working on the movie Paradox, which was directed by his girlfriend, actress Daryl Hannah. Young played a leading role in the film and provided the soundtrack. “It was just for fun,” he said. “We wanted to make a movie, so why not? We had all these people, everybody’s capable of doing it, and we had some time to kill. We started talking about it about a week before we did it. … We said, ‘Do you really want to do this? Yeah? Okay, let’s get the tent.’ … We had no limitations. We just didn’t have any money.”